Keepers

by Meg Collett

  Stevie’s nostrils flared. “Maybe you should act less like a vampire and more like—”

  Emilie’s head jerked up, right as Stevie heard it too.

  Shepherd’s voice. On the other side of the bus. His key in the door. His shoes clumping up the metal stairs.

  Stevie met Emilie’s wide eyes. Emilie muttered a low, soft string of curse words. Stevie crossed herself for good measure and belly-rolled out of the chair. Emilie caught her leg before she could army crawl out of there.

  “We have to clean this up!” Emilie hissed in her ear, a knee in the small of Stevie’s back.

  “Are you crazy? We’ve got to run!”

  Behind them, a door in the long row of Port-A-Toilets closed.

  Stevie and Emilie had the same idea at the same time.

  Emilie wrenched Stevie to her feet, and Stevie quickly finished taping the key to what she hoped was the right shard of clay pot after she’d rubbed a spot clean with her finger. At least it wouldn’t look like someone had taken the key if Shepherd found it amongst the shattered pieces.

  Holding their breaths, they scurried between the portable toilets and emerged on the other side. Even from here they could hear Shepherd shouting from inside the bus at some unfortunate soul on his cell phone.

  Emilie pointed a few toilets down and made a swirling motion with her fingers, followed by a peace sign.

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “Hey?” the person inside the toilet called out. “Is someone out there? That you, George?”

  Emilie flicked Stevie’s forehead and hurried to the end of the row of toilets angled perfectly at Shepherd’s bus.

  “One,” Emilie said, getting into position.

  Stevie joined her, planting her shoulder against the plastic cubicle of death. “Two. Wait, on three or at three?”

  “Three!”

  They threw their backs into it. The toilet went over surprisingly easy, and like dominoes, they started tipping, hitting the next one in line with just a bit more force than the one before, contents sloshing. Emilie and Stevie backpedaled a few steps, watching the destruction, and plugged their noses from the stirred-up smells.

  The final tilting toilet hit the occupied one at the end of the line. The person inside yelped in surprise as the toilet rocked sideways, but it wasn’t enough to knock it over. The other toilets were too light.

  The person screaming inside scrambled to get to the door, but he was offsetting the load, the toilet slowing its unsteady rocking.

  Emilie and Stevie lurched forward at the same time, their conclusion the same, and raced toward the toilet. They hit the side together, jarring their shoulders into the hard plastic with a teeth-rattling impact.

  It fell, taking out Shepherd’s smoking area and banging into the bus with a metal crunch.

  The person inside hadn’t stopped screaming. From the bottom of the toilet, brown liquid pooled out onto where the clay pot and ash were scattered across the ground.

  Inside the bus, Shepherd went quiet.

  Stevie grabbed Emilie’s arm and they raced off, ducking through the storage pods and fleeing in the direction of the main set. Only when they were a safe distance away, safely tucked into the alleyway between the duplexes, did they stop and gasp for air.

  “Do you think it worked?”

  Stevie coughed, still tasting that smell—perfumed shit—in the back of her throat. “My eyes! They’re burning!”

  “I think we smell.” Emilie sniffed her distressed white tee that probably cost extra because of the holes and burn marks.

  They ducked behind the demolition dumpsters as a few assistants ran by. Emilie’s headset crackled with voices. She winced and pushed it down around her neck.

  Stevie straightened, her eyes streaming tears, and blinked at Emilie. “That was awful.”

  “Think about the guy inside.”

  Stevie shuddered. “We should go change.”

  “No shit, Sherlock, but we have another problem you need to fix.”

  Stevie groaned, eyes cast skyward. “What now?”

  “It’s Arie.” Emilie’s words surprised Stevie. She fought to catch up, her brain sputtering in its tracks. “He needs tomorrow off for some insurance thing he has to take care of.”

  Stevie frowned, understanding. “But we’re filming tomorrow.”

  “Oh, really? I hadn’t noticed! Thanks for letting me know.”

  Stevie took in Emilie’s bloodshot eyes and wild hair, which had taken the concept of the messy bun to an entirely new level of disaster. There could be a bird’s nest in there for all Stevie could see.

  “Have you thought about maybe getting some sleep?” she asked, aiming for nice but landing somewhere around disgusted. “Or, you know, not having a nuclear meltdown every day?”

  “Listen.” Emilie stabbed a finger at Stevie’s chest. “Arie can’t film tomorrow. You need to bring in Cade’s brother to fill in. We can’t delay shooting with it being the finale week.”

  The shock was such that Stevie didn’t even complain about the blooming bruise on her sternum from Emilie’s claw-like fingernail. “Hale? Hale Cooper? Are you insane?”

  For a brief, very slight moment, Emilie actually looked worried, but she quickly covered it up with a scowl. “Yes. Hale Cooper. He’s hot, right? Even an idiot can talk in front of a camera. What’s the worst that can happen?”

  “Clearly, you haven’t met Hale.”

  15

  Stevie was ready Tuesday morning when Cade’s truck pulled to a stop on the quiet, still dark Gardenia Street, the rumbling diesel engine punctuating the predawn silence.

  She locked her front door behind her and hurried toward the truck, trying not to slosh her precious coffee over the rim of her mega-sized thermos, the kind that kept her drink hot for eternity. She needed every drop because she hadn’t slept much last night. From her porch, she spotted the outline of Hale’s head in the backseat. What would she tell him? She hadn’t told Cade she wanted to keep their . . . whatever it was secret; it didn’t feel fair to Cade—or her.

  Cade was already out of his truck and rounding the hood as she came through her garden gate.

  “Morning,” he said, his voice extra low and scratchy from the early hour. He held the passenger door open for her.

  “Hey,” she said, drawing up next to him.

  “You look beautiful this morning.”

  She knew he was lying for two reasons. One, because he was smiling a goofy, one-dimpled grin as if he really hadn’t noticed what she actually looked like and only cared that she was there, standing next to him. And second, because she was wearing slippers shaped like a goblin’s head, boxers, and a ragged Maroon Five concert t-shirt. Her hair looked like she’d stuck her finger in a power outlet, and she had dried acne cream splotched like a reverse Dalmatian print on her face. It wasn’t cute, and certainly not beautiful, but she didn’t bother telling him that.

  He bent down, leaning toward her face, ready to kiss her like it was the most natural thing in the world.

  From the truck, Hale frowned, watching every second transpiring between her and his brother.

  This is it, she thought. A fork in the road. She could step back and not let Cade kiss her, tell him this thing between them couldn’t be public yet, and, in doing so, imply he deserved to be kept a secret. And he would go along with it because he was a good man, but on the inside, it would hurt him, and it would hurt her too. Part of her screamed all she deserved was being someone’s dirty secret, the thing shoved in the back of a junk drawer, forgotten and lost. She didn’t want to feel that way anymore.

  But Hale would freak out. That mean part of her mind warred against her thinking. That part of her mind told her she wanted a drink, that she should have put a splash of Kahlua in her coffee because she was filming today and filming made her feel like the littlest thing in the world.

  Cade’s hand was on her lower back, pulling her closer to him as if even the small amount of space between them w
as too much.

  You don’t deserve him.

  You’ll break his heart.

  And then, maybe worst of all:

  He’ll break your heart when he realizes he can do better.

  But then, as if her higher angels were whispering to her, she remembered Annabelle’s words telling her that the things people said about her, the things she thought about herself, were just suggestions. She had the power to see it that way. She could make her own rules and define herself, even if it went against everything she believed was true.

  It was all within her power if she was willing to try.

  This morning, right now, she had the strength to attempt it.

  She wrapped her arm around Cade’s neck and pulled him the rest of the way down to her. She was the one who initiated the kiss, a quick pop on the mouth because she had coffee breath and she didn’t want the early risers of the Petunia Patrol getting all hot and bothered, but she kissed him nonetheless.

  It was all so easy.

  Cade straightened and watched her clamber gracelessly into his truck like she was the best thing in the world because she still hadn’t spilled her coffee. He closed the door and started around to the driver’s seat. A hush filled the dark cab.

  From the back, Hale said, “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  * * *

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  The cameraman next to Stevie practically leaped out of his skin, the poor guy. She pitied everyone today, even the smelly sound guy who kept adjusting his boom mic and sending rolling waves of pungent body odor from his pits.

  None of them had been prepared for Hale Cooper.

  “Do you have to point that thing in my face every second? I’ve got a sawzall in my hand!”

  Emilie rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “Hale, please, for the millionth time, don’t look at the camera. Pretend they’re not there. It’s easy.”

  “Easy?” Hale switched off the whirring blade. “This guy almost got his nuts sawed off and you want me not to look at him? Did you people even go over the safety rules around power tools? Or any kind of safety measures?”

  They were in the process of filming the master bedroom’s reno for the fifth and final phase of the show under Hale’s supervision. The camera guy in question had stepped up to Hale to get a shot from the top down while Hale cut through a beam. Had Hale’s attention slipped, even the slightest, the nuts in question would have been very close to getting cut off.

  They had actually attended numerous safety meetings, but there were just too many camera teams—which included a grip, a sound guy with a large mic, and the camera operator—in the room. Now that Stevie and Cade were a priority in the storylines, the supervising producer had allotted them more camera time, meaning more people in their workspace.

  It really wasn’t going well.

  A sound guy stepped back into a hole in the floor, where the floorboards had rotted beneath a leaky window. He stumbled but kept his grip on the equipment as he fell onto the floor.

  “You people are going to get yourselves killed.” Hale swatted at a boom mic dangling over his head and shook his head at Cade, who was over next to Emilie, positioned in front of the Cade Cam. “Have they always been this bad?”

  Cade pressed his lips together to keep from laughing.

  “Maybe we should break for lunch,” Emilie said, jumping down from her chair. She’d never once, not ever, offered for them to break for lunch first. Things must be really bad from her position behind the monitors feeding her real-time footage from all the cameras in the room.

  “Good idea,” Cade agreed.

  “After lunch, we should just get the work done, and then you people can film it,” Hale said as cameras lowered. He sounded like he was aiming for a compromise, trying to be the peacemaker, but it wasn’t coming across well.

  Emilie pinched the bridge of her nose. “Hale,” she said, sounding like she was also trying to be nice. It was a day of firsts for everyone. “This is a home renovation show. If we didn’t film you actually doing the renovation, then what would be the point?” She held up her hand when Hale opened his mouth. “Never mind. Don’t answer that. Come back after lunch. We’ll pick up filming with fewer operators.”

  It was a cold day in hell if Emilie was the patient one.

  “I didn’t realize it would be this bad,” Cade said under his breath as people filed out of the little duplex and into the hot Savannah sun.

  “Can you believe he told Emilie to stop sitting around and pick up a hammer if she was so concerned about them not getting anything done?” Stevie said.

  Cade bit back a laugh. “I really and truly can.”

  “Do you think he’s this bossy all the time? Like, do you think when he and Kyra are doing it, he’s like this?”

  “Christ, Stevie. I don’t want to think about that.”

  “It’s a mental image you can’t get rid of, right?” She shuddered as she followed Cade out of the duplex to the main tent.

  Thirty minutes later, they were halfway through lunch and savoring the relative quiet of the bustling tent. Hale eventually joined them after spending most of his free time making the duplex safer for unobservant cameramen. He and Cade discussed the rest of the day while Stevie considered how she and Emilie could get to Shepherd’s laptop.

  A soft pressure brushed against her shoulder. She looked back right as Violet tapped her again. “Stevie.”

  “Hey, Violet. What’s up?”

  Cade and Hale nodded politely at the slight, silver-haired woman before returning to their lunch, giving her and Stevie a private moment.

  “I’m sorry to bother you.”

  Stevie turned around in her seat to hear Violet better. “You’re not bothering me. Here”—Stevie pulled out the seat next to her—“you can sit down if you want.”

  After a moment’s consideration, Violet took the offered seat. She smoothed her gingham skirt, her eyes flickering around the room, checking the line at the lunch buffet and the food set out with careful precision. Finally, when she was ready, she focused back on Stevie. “I was, um, just wondering where Arie is.”

  “Oh!” Stevie fought back her grin. “Arie. Right. He had to work out something with his insurance today. He’ll be back tomorrow though. Why? Do you miss him?”

  Violet accepted Stevie’s needling with a slow blink. “I was just worried about him.”

  “Gotcha.” Stevie grabbed her turkey sandwich and took a big bite. Around a mouthful, she said. “I bet he’s worried about you too. If you need his number—”

  “Do you know what insurance issue he’s having?”

  It took Stevie a second to catch up to the random question. It felt a little personal, but this was Violet, and she really doubted Arie would mind if she told Violet anything about him. “Uh, I think he’s working out some payment issues he’s having over the new prosthetic he ordered.”

  “Oh.” Violet’s shoulders slumped. “He can’t afford it?”

  “I think he’s just having trouble with his insurance company paying for it.”

  Violet looked ready to cry. Startled, Stevie patted the young woman’s arm comfortingly. Over Violet’s shoulder, Cade looked up from his lunch, the odd turn of conversation catching his attention. “I’m sure he’ll work everything out,” he said soothingly. “He’ll be fine.”

  Violet bobbed her head and tendrils of hair slipped free from the bun she’d carefully braided her hair up in. She murmured something Stevie didn’t hear and stood. Before Stevie could ask what she’d said, Violet walked away and disappeared into the crowd of crew and cast.

  “Well,” Stevie said, turning back around in her seat, “that was weird.”

  Cade checked his watch. “Should we head back? Emilie will be pissed if we’re late.”

  “Something tells me we’re super far off her radar today.” Stevie nodded toward Hale, who was dumping his trash in the recycling by the tent’s door, but she didn’t realize just how true her words w
ere until they’d made their way back across the set to their duplex.

  There, on the stoop, in front of a cameraman and Emilie, were her parents.

  Her mother looked up in time to spot Stevie before she could run for it.

  “Stephanie!” she called. “Come over here and explain to this little assistant that we’re here to help you film today! Isn’t that great? Can someone get me a latte? Skim milk only! No sugar!”

  16

  “Is that your mom?”

  Stevie grimaced at Cade’s question. Across the street, her mom waved at her like Stevie had somehow missed her shouting. She hadn’t seen her mother in person in months, and it shocked her how frail Edith Reynolds had become. Her breastbones pressed against the underside of her skin, her hair was crispy curled, and it looked like she’d had her makeup shellacked on. Next to her, Rory looked buff in a swollen sort of way, suggesting he’d been hitting the bars as often as the gym.

  They looked like hell.

  “Whatever happens,” Stevie said under her breath, “I’m sorry.”

  Cade ran his hand down her back. “I’m sure it won’t be that bad.”

  As they walked over, Shepherd came striding down the row of storage pods that led to his office on the bus. He didn’t even glance her way as he barreled through the crowd. Emilie stepped back, toward Stevie, letting Shepherd handle the situation. Already, he was talking in low tones with Edith and Rory.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Stevie whispered to Emilie as the associate pulled her a few steps away from anyone within earshot.

  Emilie kept her gaze on her tablet, pretending to send an email as she spoke from the corner of her mouth. “I need the passwords.”

  Stevie’s mouth almost fell open. She flicked a glance at her parents, who were still keeping Shepherd busy. “You brought them here?”

  “It’s a distraction, is it not? Now, hurry up. We don’t have much time.”

  She was still gaping at Emilie. “How your mind works truly scares me, you know that?”

  “Just hand over the passwords and keep your mouth shut.”